'''Massed practice''' occurs when the material to be learned is presented repeatedly in a short period time. In psychology, the [[spacing effect]] refers to the fact that humans and animals more easily remember or learn items in a [[list learning|list]] when they are studied a few times over a long period of time ("[[spaced presentation]]"), rather than with massed practice.

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'''Massed practice''' occurs when the material to be learned is presented repeatedly in a short period of time. In psychology, the [[spacing effect]] refers to the fact that humans and animals more easily remember or learn items in a [[list learning|list]] when they are studied a few times over a long period of time ("[[spaced presentation]]"), rather than with massed practice.

The phenomenon was first identified by [[Hermann Ebbinghaus]]; his detailed study of it was published in the 1885 book ''Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology''. This robust phenomenon has been found in many explicit [[memory]] tasks such as [[free recall]], [[recognition]], [[cued-recall]], and [[frequency estimation]] (for reviews see Crowder 1976; Greene, 1989).

The phenomenon was first identified by [[Hermann Ebbinghaus]]; his detailed study of it was published in the 1885 book ''Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology''. This robust phenomenon has been found in many explicit [[memory]] tasks such as [[free recall]], [[recognition]], [[cued-recall]], and [[frequency estimation]] (for reviews see Crowder 1976; Greene, 1989).

Massed practice occurs when the material to be learned is presented repeatedly in a short period of time. In psychology, the spacing effect refers to the fact that humans and animals more easily remember or learn items in a list when they are studied a few times over a long period of time ("spaced presentation"), rather than with massed practice.